Web-Exclusive Reviews: Week of 5/7/2007

-- Publishers Weekly, 5/7/2007

NONFICTION

AMERICAN FOOD WRITING: An Anthology with Classic Recipes
Edited by Molly O'Neill. Library of America, $40 (760p) ISBN 9781598530056

This exhaustive collection of essays, anecdotes, and recipes spans three centuries of American food writing, from Meriwether Lewis's account of killing "two bucks and two buffaloe" during his famous trek across the continent, to Michael Pollan's up-to-the-minute account of the politics of organic food. In between are countless gems: Alice B. Toklas's baroque recipe for lobster, Richard Olney's meditation on paté and Edna Lewis's poignant description of killing hogs on her family farm. Ably organized and edited by the former host of the PBS series Great Food, this collection features numerous accounts of foodways long since vanished in this country; take, for instance, Charlie Ranhofer's thorough analysis of the thirteen-course society dinner, complete with "removes or solid joints," "iced punch or sherbet," and "hot sweet entremets"; or Maria Sermolino's memories of the Italian meals served at her father's Greenwich Village restaurant back when spaghetti was still a novelty. Famous food writers are well represented here (James Beard and Calvin Trillin, M.F.K. Fisher and James Villas), but perhaps even more rewarding are the wonderful but lesser-known players on the American food scene; either Elizabeth Robins Pennell's discussion of the spring chicken or Eugene Walter's tale of gumbo alone would make this volume a treasure. With so many wonderful ingredients, this rich, delectable treat is a must-have for American foodies. (May)

ATLAS OF BIRD MIGRATION: Tracing the Great Journeys of the World's Birds
Edited by Jonathan Elphick. Firefly, $35 (176p) ISBN 9781554072484

The photos and illustrations in this large, illustrated volume are so beautiful that one is tempted to skim the text—in part because there seems to be so little of it. However, that would be a mistake: while brief, the text provides all the information readers need to understand the how, why and where of bird migration. The authors note that it would be impossible to cover every species on every continent and ocean, so they've chosen to discuss "index" species—e.g., swans or sandpipers as a group—conveying the general principles which govern all bird migration, as opposed to species-specific characteristics. The first section is a primer on bird migration and habitat usage patterns, consisting of short, illustrated essays on topics like the evolution of migration, the mechanics of flight, birds' navigational methods and how human development affects migration patterns. Succeeding sections examine different families of migrating birds according to geographical distribution, and each has carefully designed maps that show birds' seasonal ranges and migratory routes. The use of color to describe, clarify, distinguish and compare migration patterns is exceptional, and clear explanations of complicated topics (e.g., how birds fly) make it an excellent text for middle and high school students as well as adults. Beautiful and functional, this is a worthwhile read for bird lovers and those raising one. (May)

BROTHERS: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years
David Talbot. Free Press, $28 (496p) ISBN 9780743269186

Those looking for new insight into John F. Kennedy's presidency will want to read this meticulously researched chronicle. Talbot, the journalist-founder of online newsmagazine Salon, sticks to the facts, starting with a timeline of then-attorney general Bobby Kennedy's actions on Nov. 22, 1963, the day his brother, the president, was killed. Immediately suspicious of the CIA, the Mafia and the Cuban exiles they're involved with, Bobby made it his mission to expose this "shadowy nexus"; much of the book concerns the Kennedy brothers' relationships with members of those factions as they dig for the truth. Talbot profiles friends and enemies, taking readers into JFK's strained work with Pentagon officials who famously pressured him to take a chance on the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion. Later chapters deal with the aftermath of JFK's, and then RFK's, assassinations, and the final chapter contains Talbot's incisive conclusions on those momentous years. Talbot's only weakness is in covering too much—with more than 150 original interviews, Talbot is forced to move too quickly from event to event, making his numerous characters hard to keep straight. Still, it's an admirable feat of reporting, and one that will spark conversation among conspiracy theorists, historians and others who lived through the Kennedy era. (May)

JACKPOT NATION: Rambling and Gambling Across Our Landscape of Luck
Richard Hoffer. HarperCollins, $24.95 (244p) ISBN 9780060761448

Describing a specifically American obsession with luck and risk-taking, going back to the Pilgrims who struck out for Plymouth, author and Sports Illustrated senior writer Hoffer (A Savage Business: The Comeback and Comedown of Mike Tyson) takes a well-meaning but half-baked tour of the U.S., crafting an ode to craps and country along the way. While the comparison between Puritans and gamblers is intriguing, as are the connections between legal betting and public education budgets (which make gambling "a civic duty!"), these ideas are only vaguely sketched out. Instead, Hoffer keeps the mood light and egregious, dealing out amusing cross-country dispatches and breezy history lessons, proving entirely cavalier about everything from the wild inefficiency of "charitable gambling" to gambling addiction ("the risks to individuals are fairly minimal"), in spite of his own family-jeopardizing $100,000 loss. Anyone wishing for a piercing look into the heart of an American vice should look elsewhere, but fellow bettors will find Hoffer's cross-country casino spree—full of big risks and bigger personalities—worth a roll. (Apr.)

LEARNING LIKE A GIRL: Educating Our Daughters in Schools of Their Own
Diana Meehan. PublicAffairs, $24.95 (336) 9781586484101

Ten or so years ago, Meehan joined two friends to create, from scratch, a school for girls in Los Angeles. A decade later, Archer School for Girls thrives. Here, in an occasionally rambling memoir, Meehan looks back on the school's creation and ponders the benefits of single-gender education. The best parts of the book detail the process of designing Archer and bringing it to life: the three founders decided that they "want to be elite, but not exclusive," and, remarkably, that's exactly what they do, creating a school welcoming any young L.A. woman to take part in a compassionate, comfortable, challenging curriculum. There's a comical California flavor to Meehan's stories that touches on the clichés of Hollywood culture—they create a school song with "accomplished, award-winning songwriters," and corral a therapist to "help us console the girls" following an anticipated soccer defeat. Though her scope is too broad, and her reminiscences can be lacking in detail, Meehan's portraits of the girls pop: one student remarks on the school uniform, "You can wear colored shoes, colored sweaters…colored skin." Though the book loses steam towards the final quarter, Meehan captures many of the issues facing modern education, elucidating the essence and the benefits of single-gender schools. (May)

LITTLE HEATHENS: Hard Times and High Spirits on an Iowa Farm During the Great Depression
Mildred Armstrong Kalish. Bantam, $22 (304p) ISBN 9780553804959

Kalish's memoir of her Iowa childhood, set against the backdrop of the Depression, captures a vanished way of traditional living and a specific moment in American history in a story both illuminating and memorable. Kalish lived with her siblings, mother and grandparents—seven in all—both in a town home and, in warmer weather, out on a farm. The lifestyle was frugal in the extreme: "The only things [my grandparents] spent money on were tea, coffee, sugar, salt, white flour, cloth and kerosene." But in spite of the austere conditions, Kalish's memories are mostly happy ones: keeping the farm and home going, caring for animals, cooking elaborate multi-course meals and washing the large family's laundry once a week, by hand. Here, too, are stories of gossiping in the kitchen, digging a hole to China with the "Big Kids" and making head cheese at butchering time. Kalish skillfully rises above bitterness and sentiment, giving her memoir a clear-eyed narrative voice that puts to fine use a lifetime of careful observation: "Observing the abundance of life around us was just so naturally a part of our days on the farm that it became a habit." Simple, detailed and honest, this is a refreshing and informative read for anyone interested in the struggles of average Americans in the thick of the Great Depression. (May 29)

PLENTY: One Man, One Woman, and a Raucous Year of Eating Locally
Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon. Harmony, $24 (272p) ISBN 9780307347329

Over a meal of fish, potatoes, and wild mushrooms foraged outside their cabin in British Columbia, the authors of this charmingly eccentric memoir decide to embark on a year of eating food grown within 100 miles of their Vancouver apartment. Thus begins an exploration of the foodways of the Pacific northwest, along which the authors, both professional writers, learn to can their own vegetables, grow their own herbs, search out local wheat silos and brew jars of blueberry jam. They also lose weight, bicker and down hefty quantities of white wine from local vineyards. Their engaging narrative is sprinkled with thought-provoking reportage, such as a UK study that shows the time people spend shopping the supermarket—driving, parking and wandering the aisles—is "nearly equal to that spent preparing food from scratch twenty years ago." Though their tone can wax preachy, the wisdom of their advice is obvious, and the deliciousness of their bounty is tantalizing—if local eating means a sandwich full of peppers, fried mushrooms, and "delectably oozing goat cheese," their efforts appear justified. (May)

SINGLE STATE OF THE UNION: Single Women Speak Out On Life, Love and the Pursuit of Happiness
Edited by Diane Mapes. Seal, $14.95 paper (280p) ISBN 978580052023

Most popular media portrayals depict single women in one of two states: single-and-loving-it or single-and-desperate. Single women strike back in this compilation of essays, edited by author and freelance writer Mapes (How to Date in a Post-Dating World), in which they discuss with candor and courage their own experiences outside of the domestic partnership paradigm. Unfortunately, for every poignant, well-written highlight—such as Chelsea Handler's "Thunder," Sasha Cagen's "How I Dodged a Reality Show Bullet" and Kay Trimberger's "Can a Single Woman Really Be Happy Without a Soulmate?"—there are two or three pieces that grate, either through self-indulgence or sheer volume. In one particularly edit-worthy tale, a sex-columnist debates the merits of her single life versus her married life in a manner not unlike a rambling "confessional" on braindead reality series The Real World: unstoppable and irrelevant. The myriad states of singularity—secure-in-your-fluxing, single-for-life, widower, etc.—that the book brings to light are interesting but, in these essays, fail to intrigue; overall, the collection reads more like excerpts from a support group meeting than a collection of professional work. (Apr.)

THE SUN KINGS: The Unexpected Tragedy of Richard Carrington and the Tale of How Modern Astronomy Began
Stuart Clark. Princeton, $24.95 (224p) ISBN 9780691126609

In this well-researched and very well-written book, Clark tells the embattled, little-known history of modern astronomy, a spry tale full of intrigue, jealousy, spite, dedication and perseverance. Peopled with a large, colorful cast, author and editor Clark (Journey to the Stars) delivers a tale rich in conflict and passion, beginning with William Herschel, an 18th century pioneer of telescope construction, who sets the status quo when he's ridiculed for discovering a relation between sunspot activity and grain harvests. In the 19th century, Clark covers a period of "deep crisis for British science," which saw the Astronomer Royal, George Biddell Airy, do all he could to suffocate solar research in England because he couldn't believe "in any link beyond mere sunlight between the Sun and Earth." Naturally, Airy couldn't stop progress, and solar observation continued through the 19th century under the direction of Greewich Observatory's Walter Maunder; in the 20th century, Clark describes the work of George Hale, instigator of the research that would eventually vindicate old Herschel by showing a profound correlation between sunspotsand agricultural production; in the present, Clark considers the success and legacy of space-based observatories (SOHO and STEREO) and land-based radio telescopes. Though it might sound dry, Clark's parade of historical characters dramatize the narrative nicely, and Clark conveys the significance of their scientific observations with plenty of context and thorough references, making this a fascinating work for both casual stargazers and serious astronomy buffs. (May)

TIP OFF: How the 1984 NBA Draft Changed Basketball Forever
Filip Bondy. Da Capo, $25 (304p) ISBN 9780306814860

It's not the worst mistake in sports history, but it's among the most famous—with the second pick in the 1984 NBA draft, the Portland Trailblazers selected Sam Bowie instead of several future stars, including Michael Jordan. In this tremendously readable book, Bondy tells the full story of that draft, which most experts consider the best ever. Bondy follows six draftees—Bowie, Jordan, Hakeem Olajuwon, Charles Barkley, Sam Perkins, and John Stockton. With commentary from scouts, general managers, coaches, and the players themselves, Bondy draws a portrait of each player, from just before the draft to the present day. Bondy perfectly synthesizes exactly why each player landed where he did, examining prevailing draft philosophies, recent roster blunders and the possibility that teams lost on purpose. While not as revelatory as Michael Lewis' Moneyball (Bondy's post-mortem of Portland's mistake focuses on familiar themes, particularly the fetishism of height), this book is every bit as enjoyable as the baseball bestseller. Bondy delves deeper into the character of Bowie than anyone has before, revealing a likeable man with terrible luck, and gives the reader a sense of how profoundly Jordan, Barkley and Olajuwon reshaped the league. It may not be transcendent enough to breakthrough with non-basketball fans, but anybody with a cursory interest in the game is in for a treat. (May)

LIFESTYLE

THE GREAT AMERICAN CAMPING COOKBOOK
Scott Cookman. Broadway, $17.95 paper (288p) ISBN 9780767923088

Roughly one third of American families go camping at least once each year, according to longtime Field & Stream contributor Cookman (Ice Blink, Atlantic), and they've all got to eat. In this breezy and informative collection, part cookbook and part camping lore, Cookman proves time and again that healthy, tasty food and camping are not mutually exclusive. Eschewing processed foods for the real thing, Cookman offers a list of staples to pack (apples, lemons, cheese, ham) as well as lighter, smarter alternatives—for instance, why bother hauling soda when powdered Kool-Aid will do the trick? His provisions lists will cover most outings and are scaled for various group sizes and lengths of time. Operating from that basic stock of ingredients, he offers recipes for everything from campfire classics like Biscuits and Gravy, Pan-fried Trout and Baked Beans to Squash Fritters and Wild Rice Pancakes. Given the breadth of his recipes and their ease of preparation, this will be a welcome resource for camp cooks. (May)

EXTREME BARBECUE: Smokin' Rigs and Real Good Recipes
Dan Huntley and Lisa Grace Lednicer. Chronicle, $18.95 paper (300p) ISBN 9780811853187

Part travelogue and part cookbook, Huntley and Lednicer's profiles of American barbecue aficionados deserves a spot on the shelf next to any avid outdoor cooker's library of favorites. The authors, members of the Kansas City Barbecue Society, are well-versed in regional styles and methods, giving equal space to all approaches. Offering close to a hundred recipes for everything from a Trashcan Oyster Roast and a surprisingly frog-free Frogmore Stew (essentially a low country boil) to traditional Brisket and Baked Beans, the dishes are varied and many can accommodate groups of twenty or more. But the real find here is the people doing the cooking: Huntly and Lednicer sought out barbecue fans around the country who employ everything from cardboard boxes to converted commercial pizza deck ovens in their quest for the best barbecue. Their stories (including one in which an entire pig catches fire) entertain and educate, though those looking for specific instructions on recreating these homegrown contraptions will find crucial details lacking. Still, it's rare to find a new take on this well-worn topic, and the authors do an admirable job bringing together colorful characters, inventive techniques and lip-smacking food, making this great for reading while you wait for the ribs to get done. (June)

UNCLE BUBBA'S SAVANNAH SEAFOOD
Earl "Bubba" Hiers with Polly Powers Stramm. Simon & Schuster, $24 (192p) ISBN 9780743292832

The latest salvo from the Paula Deen camp (Bubba is her beloved baby brother) fits comfortably alongside Deen's many cookbooks. Sharing much in common with his sister (namely, a fondness for cream cheese, butter and mayonnaise), Hiers offers a number of dishes featured at his coastal Georgia restaurant, Uncle Bubba's Oyster House. Simple, tasty southern classics like Cornbread, Fried Chicken and Pecan Pie abound, but it's the seafood that takes center stage, ranging from Gumbo, Crab Stew and BBQ Shrimp to Seafood Nachos and Baked Oysters with Crab. Virtually all the recipes are straightforward and call for seafood that can be easily sourced even for cooks who don't live near the coast. Rounding out the collection are the usual sides (red beans and rice, cole slaw) as well as interesting variations like Vidalia Onion and Lump Blue Crab Salad. A solid collection of desserts suits every skill level—beginners will do just fine with any of Hier's three pound cakes, while more advanced bakers will want to try his Lemon Cheese Cake, really a traditional layer cake with lemon curd, seven minute frosting and, oddly enough, not a dab of cream cheese. (May)

ILLUSTRATED

THE REMBRANDT BOOK
Gary Schwartz. Abrams, $65 (384p) ISBN 9780810943179

Rembrandt is widely considered one of the most important painters in European art history, and this large, lavishly illustrated volume reinforces that image without skirting controversy (including debates over some of his works' authenticity). Dutch art scholar and columnist Schwartz is clearly an expert on the artist, encapsulating his style in sharp bursts of insight: "Human weakness and—especially—human strength inspired him. He found it not only in heroic action but also in resignation and introspection." But the author doesn't shy from paintings considered less successful, such as the so-called "Leiden history painting," "full of portentous details that do not correspond sufficiently to any known iconography." In contextualizing these works, Schwartz is careful to explain Rembrandt's beliefs, worldview and inspiration: "The text [of the Bible] was however only one of the givens…[along] with non-biblical literary sources; models in older art…antiquarian research; knowledge of folkways…and his own imagination." It's this complete view that makes the book so insightful, but it's the personal details that will gain readers' trust: "Few artists' biographers had anything nice to say about him as a person." This detailed, down-to-earth character sketching, combined with solid biographic and historical information, that makes this book as intellectually substantial as it is gorgeous. 700 full-color illustrations. (Apr.)

POETRY

SILENCE FELL
Josephine Dickinson. Houghton Mifflin, $22 (96p) ISBN 9780618718719

Dickinson's life story could win somebody an Oscar; rendered profoundly deaf at the age of six, the Englishwoman nevertheless attended Oxford, then became a composer and a music teacher before moving to the remote village of Alston, in England's Northeast. There she fell in love with Douglas Dickinson, an elderly sheep farmer; the couple led a delighted rural life together for years before Douglas' death in 2004. Selected from two UK volumes (2001's Scarberry Hill and 2004's The Voice), these gentle verses of love and rural life describe the happy couple, their alternately green and wintry surroundings, and the work of gardening, keeping house and raising lambs, wethers and ewes. Poems about Douglas—some in rhyming forms—can be unguardedly tender: "When we step round the house/ to the front door again and kiss,/ we know it is no ordinary/ love, this." Her poems on his death would melt even an adamant heart. The volume's arrangement follows the rural year, from March to February, through planting and harvest, the lambing and slaughtering seasons, and moving records of particular scenes: "The windsock pulls/ to east. It might yet rain. The moment stays." Only a few poems—notably the two-page tour de force "I Thought You'd Gone to the River," reminiscent of Edward Thomas—achieve individual, memorable forms, but the whole collection resounds with genuine emotion, and could be a sleeper hit. Galway Kinnell's inspiring foreword describes how the American poet met the Englishwoman, and praises the simplicities Kinnell sees in her work. (May)

SPRING POEMS ALONG THE RIO GRANDE
Jimmy Santiago Baca. New Directions, $13.95 paper (128p) ISBN 9780811216852

Once imprisoned, now celebrated nationally as a performer, poet and memoirist (A Place to Stand), Baca returns to the terrain, forms and concerns of Winter Poems Along the Rio Grande (2004) in this perhaps less ambitious sequel. Vivid free verse alternates description of the Texas-Mexico border (a site for the poet's regular walks and runs) with hopes and fears for the poet and for his nations. "Landscapes of war,/ people starving,/ refugees waving for us to help them" represent the hard politics of the present, competing for attention with the poet's difficult past ("when my life/ blew from street corner to street corner/ in menial work") and with what seem to be memories of sex addiction, the years when "my love/ was a madness." Baca tries both to envision a brighter future and to live fully, attentively, in the present, noticing both clear spots of natural beauty and incursions of things manmade, from the feather of a long-sought blue heron to "the green irrigation pipe-gates/ that mark the end of my run south." Fans of his earlier performance poetry may appreciate his new work's warmth, or wish it edgier, less suffused with optimism ("what is broken God blesses"). Against all his worries, all his reasons to despair, Baca again and again turns back to the border landscape he loves and trusts: "The Rio Grande bosque/ doesn't lie—when it's ready to show affection/ it does." (May)

VELLUM
Matt Donovan. Houghton Mifflin/Mariner, $11.95 paper (80p) ISBN 9780618822126

Ornate elements from European art and bruised blue-collar lives from middle America (Toledo, New Mexico, Trenton, and elsewhere) form the poles around which Donovan's lyrical debut revolves. "There's something to be said for the pattern ruin makes," he explains, and his own patterns combine ruin and splendor in the manner of great mosaics, with dozens of noun phrases, lists, memorable names of things, adjacent and conjoined in his long unrhymed lines. "A Blues About Wanting in the End" finds, in a tree destroyed by beetles, all manner of elegy and suffering: "the wood honeycombed, scar-sprawled & furrowed;/ the tangle of channels where the larvae have hatched." "An East Toledo Map of Ash" includes "pastel plastic hangers,// cans, a punctured hose, a framed sketch of orchids streaming from black grass,// black bags cinched with twine." Another poem begins with an epigraph from a medieval historian, and ends in northern New Mexico, where the poet lives now, and where he finds sources of "joy: knitted V-neck cardigans; coyote fence posts// looped with wire; a pair of work boots snared in the telephone lines." Chosen for publication by Mark Doty (who contributes a foreword), Donovan's detail-packed, even bejeweled poems resemble, in spots, those of Amy Clampitt and Albert Goldbarth. Though Donovan's odes may not find the formal complexities of the former, nor the comic variety of the latter, the sheer vigor of his noticings could make him a poet to watch. (May)

FICTION

BLESSED TRINITY
Vanessa Davis Griggs. Dafina, $15 paper (320p) ISBN 9780758217325

In Griggs's faith-filled third novel (after 2005's Wings of Grace) featuring charismatic, dreadlocked pastor George Landris, George and his wife, Johnnie Mae Taylor, have left their Atlanta megachurch to start afresh in Johnnie Mae's hometown of Birmingham, Ala., where the pastor believes God sent him to begin a new congregation. Financial troubles and a hostile reception from power-hungry local ministers stall George's plans, but he puts his trust in God and soon builds a thriving congregation, Followers of Jesus Faith Worship Center. The pastor and Johnnie Mae face another challenge in three mysterious new churchgoers: the controlling diva, Faith Alexandria Morrell; Faith's more cautious, shy identical twin, Hope; and their plain easygoing sister, Charity. This inspirational novel leaves the reader eager to know what Griggs plans next for this spiritual family. (May)

THE FOURTH ORDER
Stephen Frey. Ballantine, $24.95 (336p) ISBN 9780345480644

A less than credible scenario undermines this stand-alone thriller from bestseller Frey (The Power Broker). Michael Rose, chief financial officer for Trafalgar Industries, wants to acquire CIS (Computer Information Systems), which provides its services to a secret government program, I-4 (for the Fourth Order of Immunity). Since the day after 9/11, I-4 has had wide license to detain and torture anyone with suspected terrorist connections, including U.S. citizens. Rose, who faces opposition allied with I-4 on the Trafalgar board, must also deal with a number of personal challenges; for starters, the police suspect him of murdering his unfaithful wife. Rose is strangely unsuspicious when a beautiful young woman throws herself at him, despite signs that she's part of an effort to set him up. Frey doesn't supply enough plausible detail to support his paranoid vision of an America where even the innocent disappear without trace into secret facilities. Some readers may find the cabal's true plan, when revealed, too far-fetched to swallow. (May 29)

JUST SEX
Susan Kay Law. Berkley, $14 paper (336p) ISBN 9780425215234

As Law's latest opens, Ellen Markham, a Minnesota housewife who considers Diet Coke her only vice, is having her hands pulled off her philandering husband Tom's neck by an extremely expensive marriage counselor. After the disastrous session, Tom throws down the gauntlet and tells Ellen that she should have an affair to even the score and realize that sometimes a relationship can be just sex. Hyperbolic comedy drives this not-quite romance from veteran Law (One Lonely Night, etc.), as Ellen, with help from best friend Jill, warily embarks on the challenge to meet Mr. Right Now. The madcap plot awkwardly juxtaposes with the complex feelings Ellen faces as her marriage erodes (the couple have two children), and everyone around her, including Ellen's 15-year-old daughter and Jill, harbors debilitating secrets. There's a surprisingly bitter aftertaste to the novel's often sugary sweet setups. (June)

THE SHOE QUEEN
Anna Davis. Pocket, $14 paper (416p) ISBN 9781416537359

British author Davis's first stateside release channels the literary wilds of 1925 Paris, where aspiring poet Genevieve Shelby King moves her new husband, Robert from Boston. Out clubbing with bon vivant friend Lulu, Genevieve, who is less than virtuous, spies the perfect pair of shoes on a rival's feet. Nothing will do but that Paolo Zachari, maker of the "world's most expensive shoes," take Genevieve's order. Businessman husband Robert is still smitten, but there's something mysterious about Genevieve's past that he's determined to uncover. In a wonderfully realistic denouement to this complexly plotted story, Genevieve resolves her marital ambivalence and comes to a touching conclusion about her literary aspirations. (June)

AUDIO

THE NO ASSHOLE RULE: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One that Isn't
Robert I. Sutton, read by the author. Hachette Audio, abridged, three CDs, 3 hrs., $24.98 ISBN 9781594838675

Expletive or not, by the end of this book, listeners will be desensitized to the word "asshole," which is said hundreds of times in this audiobook. Sutton's premise seems pretty simple: get rid of arrogant jerks in the work place from every level of an organization. Through each chapter, he explores a different aspect of assholes, from identifying the type to dealing with them to what one should do if they believe they are an asshole to why it may be beneficial to keep one or two around. You'd think with a title like The No Asshole Rule, some humor would follow, but that's where the book falters. It's too serious and often too simplistic in its resolutions for curing the asshole problem at work. Sutton's reading of his own words lacks conviction. The interview with the author at the end proves interesting since his answers feel more candid than the rehearsed words of the audiobook. Simultaneous release with the Warner hardcover. (Reviews, Dec. 18). (Mar.)